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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369808">Blowing Smoke</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXTRASHCATXx/pseuds/xXTRASHCATXx'>xXTRASHCATXx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Saints Row</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 11:14:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,809</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXTRASHCATXx/pseuds/xXTRASHCATXx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaundi’s next drag was long, smoke pulling back into her parted lips.</p><p>Folding her legs underneath her, Shaundi asked, “So, you ever even kissed anybody?”</p><p>A gentle clink as she placed the still-smoking lightbulb in the ashtray next to her. Flopping forward onto her palm, propping her head up just barely. Looking at Liesel with those lazy half lidded eyes.</p><p>Liesel always found it hard to focus when Shaundi stared at her like that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Boss/Shaundi (Saints Row), Female Boss/Shaundi (Saints Row)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Blowing Smoke</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Playing the SR3 remaster got me in the mood for revamping my Saints Row boss a bit.</p><p>It's not like I wrote much about her before so why not a short one shot with one of my many pairings for her?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You can try some, you know.”</p><p>Shaundi always offered.</p><p>Liesel never accepted.</p><p>Not looking to start a fight, she politely raised a hand to the broken lightbulb, “Nah I’m good. Stick with ol’ garden variety weed.”</p><p>“Your loss,” Shaundi didn’t sound too pressed, just meant more for her, “You’re real weird about stuff sometimes. Makes me remember you were some cute lil’ Catholic schoolgirl at some point.”</p><p>Liesel was a far cry from that scared little girl nowadays. Like a belated teenage rebellion she decked herself out in the gaudiest goth clothes Nobody Loves Me had to offer. Leather mini-skirt, bodice, huge clomping boots. All black makeup making those fading grey eyes all the lighter. The pervasive black stark against her unnaturally pure white skin.</p><p>“I mean, my asshole dad homeschooled me so technically I never got the benefits of being a schoolgirl.”</p><p>“Being?”</p><p>Liesel leaned against the plush purple pillows piled up on the obnoxious zebra print bed, staring transfixed at the smoke trails that twisted around her friend as she tried to come up with an answer, “I dunno. Gettin’ good at making friends?”</p><p>“You’re pretty good at that,” each heave of Shaundi’s low laugh blowing out more smoke, “Got damn near every Saints that’s ever been wrapped tight around your little finger. Hell, even Aisha likes you and you knocked over her mailbox.”</p><p>“Eh, that’s just because I saved her ass way back when,” Liesel pinched at her thin hair to examine it, blonde dyed black and needing a touch up, “And I let her dress me up real nice, I think if she didn’t have those pipes she’d be a personal stylist or something. Didn’t make me something I wasn’t either. Even if she said I looked like a lil’ Wednesday Addams motherfucker.”</p><p>“That’s called making friends, Boss.”</p><p>“Well, guess I turned out alright then.”</p><p>“So you’ll also be fine if you do a little dust with your old pal, Shaundi?” she twiddled the bulb in her hand again.</p><p>“Ha, turn out like you then,” she deflected again.</p><p>“What, sexy as hell?”</p><p>“White people dreads and pants half off my ass.”</p><p>“Pants half off my ass?” Shaundi lazily kicked at the edge of the leather skirt, “You know I can see right up there, right? Purple thong. Think I see a studded Fleur de Lis on it too.”</p><p>“Bedazzled, actually. Did it myself,” Liesel made no move to rectify the sprawled out angle that was giving her friend such a tawdry view, “What, you want a pair? I take commissions.”</p><p>“I mean, first off, yes,” Shaundi pushed it further up on Liesel’s thigh with her foot, giving herself a better look through the smoke filling the room, “You may be a bit of a prude with drugs n’ shit but you’re never shy about giving a show. People always talk about my ex’s, how many you got squirreled away acting like that?”</p><p>“Zero.”</p><p>“Bullshit.”</p><p>Hand on the dirty sneaker, Liesel pushed it back, “I mean, you said it yourself. Had a hell of an oppressive upbringing. Didn’t see anyone other than my dad until after the incid… until I joined the Saints. And then I was only eighteen, weren’t none of the Saints gonna touch that. Even if anyone’d be stupid enough to try, you know Johnny’d kill ‘em with his bare hands.”</p><p>“I know he’d be after anyone too old but you had to know someone around your age back then, right?”</p><p>“Nope and then I got a’sploded,” Liesel mimed the boast explosion with her hands, “And the second I got out of that coma? Hit the ground running. Had to save Gat, get the Saints back together, get some new people… ain’t had time for any of that shit.”</p><p>Shaundi’s next drag was long, smoke pulling back into her parted lips.</p><p>Folding her legs underneath her, Shaundi asked, “So, you ever even kissed anybody?”</p><p>A gentle clink as she placed the still-smoking lightbulb in the ashtray next to her. Flopping forward onto her palm, propped her head up just barely. Looking at Liesel with those lazy half lidded eyes.</p><p>Liesel always found it hard to focus when Shaundi stared at her like that.</p><p>“No,” she looked away, acting like the cracks in the brick wall were suddenly entrancing, “Unless you count that time Lin gave me one on the forehead.”</p><p>“You had a crush on her, right?”</p><p>Liesel’s head jerked back at that, “Hell no, you think I’d-”</p><p>“You did.”</p><p>Shaundi’s grin was unbearably smug, she always loved uncovering things that Liesel had told anybody ever. Damn good at it too. The Loa Dust may make her mind float but it’s a damned sharp weapon when she focuses it.</p><p>And more and more she found herself focusing that brain of hers on the Boss.</p><p>“She was too old for me, it wasn’t going to go anywhere and then she died. End of story.”</p><p>“You wanna talk about it?” Shaundi crawled up next to her, pushing the too-small woman to the side to make room for herself. Collapsing next to her before she could be stopped, “Was she your first crush?”</p><p>Shaundi could see Liesel trying to decide whether she should shove her away or not. Despite her tiny frame, a supernatural amount of strength resided inside her. Never was a secret. From where they lay, Shaundi could see the heavy sledgehammer by the door. Flecked bloodstains dotting the handle of it.</p><p>The Boss wasn’t human and anyone even remotely close to her knew that.</p><p>For a long time, Liesel ignored her. Taking another long drag of her own joint. Shaundi laughed as Liesel blew it into her too-close face. Hoping that it would maybe make Shaundi forget.</p><p>It didn’t.</p><p>Sighing, Liesel flicked it in the general direction of the ashtray, “Alright, you’re evidently going to keep starin’ at me. So yes. She was my first crush.”</p><p>“What did you like about her?”</p><p>“She was… just so fucking badass,” Liesel’s voice went quiet, “Took absolutely no shit and smart as hell. ‘Best racer to ever come out of Chinatown,’ she’d always say. And she deserved that title. She taught me to drive, you know that? Eighteen and no idea how. She even let me drive her custom Voxel but I wasn’t allowed to touch the radio.”</p><p>“You said she died...”</p><p>“Fucking Julius,” Liesel spat, reaching for another joint piled next to her, “Thought it was a smart idea to play super spy with street gangs. Had her go undercover in the Westside Rollerz. You remember the Rollerz?”</p><p>“Psh, of course I do,” Shaundi handed her a lighter, “Rich assholes were always doing donuts in Stilwater University parking lot. Took the bumper right off my beater.”</p><p>“Well, Joseph Price didn’t take too kindly to finding out Lin was an undercover Saint,” Liesel lit the end, watching the smoke begin to trail upwards, “I was with her when she died. Locked in the trunk of her own car as he pushed it into the river. I was so young, she always felt like she was responsible for me. Was comforting me even with her last breath, saved me when she could have saved herself.”</p><p>Next to her, Liesel could feel Shaundi shift. Movements still sluggish from the Loa Dust as she hugged the small woman the best she could. Struggling for a second before managing to worm her way under one thin arm to rest her head on the uncomfortable studded leather bodice. Knowing it would leave heavy imprints on her skin. Uncaring about the cold skin or the fact she couldn’t hear a heartbeat.</p><p>Liesel’s voice broke the quiet one more time.</p><p>“I looked into my first love’s eyes as she died.”</p><p>“No wonder you’re so damn scary,” Shaundi let a hand slide up and down Liesel’s side, “That’s the kind of thing most people don’t come back from.”</p><p>“Don’t come back from three year comas either. But I’m something else, I’m real tenacious. Also I’m real damn lucky that Troy took such a shine to me. Had a lot of people gunning to pull the plug on me but he stopped it every time. Saw it on my medical records, still trying to figure out how to make it up to him.”</p><p>“You have that affect on people,” Shaundi accepted the joint passed to her, taking a puff, “Even with you being such a terrible force of nature, people want to protect you.”</p><p>“Wonder why. Spent all my childhood trying to figure out why nobody cared enough to even know I exist,” Liesel stared, transfixed on the smouldering end of the blunt, “But now everyone’s gonna know who I am, even if I need to burn this whole city to the ground.”</p><p>“You know, you’re well on the way,” Shaundi pointed at the weed hanging too lazily from her hand, “You know this shit’s dangerous, right? Last time I smoked in bed like this I set my hair on fire.”</p><p>“That why one of your dreads is so much shorter than the others?”</p><p>“Sure the fuck is,” Shaundi laughed, “Burnt it right in half.”</p><p>“Well, as far as I’m concerned, if you weren’t here I wouldn’t mind being kindling.”</p><p>Shaundi rolled onto her elbow, hovering over the pale girl, “Nah, you can’t do that. I’d miss you too much.”</p><p>“Ha, tricked you into caring about me,” Liesel’s foggy grey eyes met Shaundi’s intense green ones, “All I had to do was go on a long, rambling story about my miserable life to answer a simple question. If I’d ever been kissed.”</p><p>With a soft grin, Shaundi leans forward and changes the answer. An abnormally soft and chaste kiss for her against Liesel’s cold, black lips. Like kissing a statue.</p><p>Liesel was certainly frozen like one when she pulled back.</p><p>It only made Shaundi laugh, long and slow, uncaring about the smoke twisting up from the joint burnt to the base. Her tone impossibly fond, “Wow, you really weren’t kidding about never kissing anyone before.”</p><p>That broke through the surprised fog, Liesel bursting back to life as she nailed Shaundi with a pillow, “No fair, I wasn’t expecting it!”</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Shaundi winked, rolling off the low bed and standing up with a stretch, “Next time I’ll make sure you know what’s coming. But right now? Gotta go meet Pierce at Purgatory.”</p><p>“You could...” Liesel sat up to watch her leave, “You could always come back afterwards?”</p><p>Pausing at the door, the sounds of the street muffled from the subterranean entrance, Shaundi looked back through the hazy room at Liesel looking at her hopeful. An oddly genuine look for her.</p><p>But that wasn’t what she was focused on.</p><p>“Boss, the bed’s on fire.”</p><p>Shaundi cackled as the door closed behind her and muffled sounds of Liesel panicking to put it out came from behind it.</p>
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